The present invention relates to apparatus for transporting rod shaped articles, especially plain or filter tipped cigarettes, cigars, cigarillos, filter rod sections and/or other articles which constitute or form part of smokers' products. For the sake of convenience, the following description will refer to the transport of rod-shaped articles which constitute or form part of smokers' products with the understanding, however, that the same technique can be resorted to for the transport of other types of rod-shaped commodities.
It is often necessary to transport plain or filter cigarettes or analogous rod-shaped articles (hereinafter called articles) at right angles to their axes (sideways) along a composite path which extends in part along a first and in part along a second conveyor. For example, filter cigarettes in a tipping machine are normally transported in the form of a single-layer stream whose constituents are caused to move through severing, inverting, drying, testing, ejecting and/or other stations. As a rule, the conveyors are rotary drums or endless belts or chains which are formed with axially parallel peripheral flutes and have suction ports which extend inwardly from the flutes and are connected or connectable with suitable suction generating means to ensure reliable retention of articles during travel along certain portions of the paths which are defined by the conveyors. The suction ports in the peripheral surfaces of the circulating conveyors form predetermined patterns or groups of suction ports in order to ensure that they can be readily connected with the suction generating means during selected stages of angular movement of the respective conveyors. For example, a first conveyor can accept successive articles of a single-layer stream at the five o'clock position to transport the articles to the twelve o'clock position where the articles are accepted by a second conveyor (at the six o'clock position of the second conveyor) which transports them through a predetermined angle, e.g., to the two o'clock position.
It is often desirable or necessary to remove samples from a moving stream of cigarettes or analogous rod-shaped articles, e.g., for the purpose of inspecting the imprints on their wrappers, to weigh the cigarettes in order to ascertain whether or not the mass of tobacco therein meets the requirements which are set by the manufacturers and/or by the authorities, to subject the removed articles to additional tests other than those which can be and/or are normally carried out in the machine proper, to compare a freshly removed batch of articles with the articles that were removed before, and/or for other purposes. Removal of samples presents no problems when the machine is running slowly or when the machine discharges articles into a resevoir or the like. However, removal of samples at regular or irregular intervals is much more problematic when the articles are transported in a modern high-speed machine, e.g., in or from a cigarette maker which turns out up to and in excess of 7000 cigarettes per minute. In such machines, removal of samples by hand is evidently impossible so that, if samples are to be removed, the machine must be specially designed with a view to allow for removal of samples at desired intervals. This entails additional expenditures which contribute significantly to the bulk, cost and complexity of the machine. For example, German Offenlegungsschrift No. 1,657,235 proposes to install a suction drum next to the conveyor which transports the articles along their normal path. The suction drum has suction ports which attract the oncoming articles when connected to a suction generating device so that the suction drum then removes a certain number of articles from their normal path. The normal path is defined by a belt conveyor having flutes which receive the articles from a preceding conveyor and whereon the articles are also held by suction. A drawback of such machines is that the removal of samples from a stream of articles necessitates the provision of an additional conveyor (suction drum) with appurtenant auxiliary equipment including means for applying suction, means for synchronizing the movements of the suction drum with the adjacent conveyor or conveyors and/or others. Such embodiment is quite expensive, and the suction drum occupies space which is not readily available in a cigarette maker, in a filter tipping machine or in another machine for the manufacture and/or processing of plain or filter cigarettes, cigars, cigarillos, filter rod sections or the like.